This invention relates to an electronic musical instrument for automatically playing music by sequentially reading out a plurality of autoplay data at a predetermined timing.
There have hitherto been electronic musical instruments in which autoplay music data is stored in a memory, and which at the time of automatically playing is sequentially read out and automatically played. Particularly, in order to facilitate the manual practice of beginners, it has been contemplated to construct an electronic musical instrument so that the read timing of data from the memory and key operation timing are compared when the keyboard is operated to play music automatically. When key depression timing for the melody part is behind the normal timing, the other part such as an accompaniment are temporarily suspended. As soon as the next key depression for the melody is done, the automatic play of the other part is restored with the preset tempo. If the key depression timing is advanced to normal timing of the autoplay, the other part is fast fed too.
Further, there has been used an electronic musical instrument which has a melody guide function which facilitates practice by displaying at least the note of the tone to be sounded next on a display means consisting of light-emitting diodes or the like arranged in correspondence to the individual keys on the keyboard. Further, there has also been used an electronic musical instrument which has a one-key play function so that melody data can be read out for one tone after another and played when a predetermined key is switched on and off.
Further, there has also been an electronic musical instrument in which not a single automatically played musical piece, but a plurality of automatically played musical pieces, e.g., the first melody, second melody, chord, etc., is stored in a memory and this data is simultaneously reproduced for the autoplay function.
With an electronic musical instrument in which the reading of data from the memory is timed with the key depression, the keyboard is operated for the melody part of music and the other parts of the piece, such as the chords, are produced following the key operation of the melody part. In this case, when the timing of the depressed key for the melody part is delayed, the autoplay of the other parts is suspended from the normal timing and is only resumed at the initial tempo when another melody key is depressed. Therefore, even if the key depression is delayed very slightly, the autoplay of the other parts of music is interrupted. Every time the autoplay is interrupted, the piece itself is marred, deteriorating the interest of the performer, particularly the beginner who has difficulty in operating keys properly.